Dancer With One Leg

by Stephen Dobyns

A few weeks in the life of Frank Lazard, a lieutenant in the Boston Fire Department's Arson Squad--with overlapping cases, moody private-life troubles, and modest drama.

Genres: Mystery

229 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 19, 1983

About the author

Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.

He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.

Reviews

[C. James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dobyns is a terrific writer -- one who can do a variety of styles and subjects. This should place him as one of our best, but he seems to be considered a "cult writer." I'd say the cult is composed of people who appreciate really good writing. Dancer is his best in what might be called "serious crime fiction" as opposed to "mysteries" or "whodunits"
Dancer takes on Arthur Miller subjects -- guilt and atonement, accountability. The central character is an arson investigator who has built his career on his strict code of honesty which evolves into a driving ruthlessness to catch and convict which turns into a soul-wrenching investigation. One hell of a novel!

[Toni Wyatt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a read that I particularly enjoyed. It's unfortunate, in my opinion, that after doing what was obviously a tremendous amount of excellent research, that the characters lacked in development and appeal. If the main character loathes himself, it's pretty much an assurance that the readers will not like him either, and not in an, 'I want to keep reading to see if he can overcome' sort of way. Also, I've never enjoyed any blatant ethnic verbal abuse by any author. It's not needed, and it's not anything that makes the writing better. It's just hateful rhetoric making the piece ugly.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a non-series Dobyns character-driven crime novel focused on arson investigation. The protagonist Frank Lazard is a prickly, downbeat guy -- now an arson investigator after having been badly injured as a fireman. The book has some narrative fat, including a sub-plot about an ex-con who is in deep trouble with a loan shark, and some detail for the sake of detail (e.g., a long, but interesting description of the Boston Fire Alarm Headquarters). These quibbles are minor. I really liked this book -- and suspect this is exactly the type of book that doesn't get written today or rarely sees the light of day. Though "Dancer with One Leg" is a crime novel, it isn't intensely focused on the crime, and the solution is less important than the response of the protagonist to the morally complex situation.